Bio:

Tell us a little about you:

Hi! I'm the Program Director of 21st Century Learning at a K-8 school in Newark, NJ. We already have a robust Digital Storytelling curriculum for students from 1-8th grade using a variety of technologies. The teachers usually lead the pre-writing/writing process and I join for media selection and creation. We're rolling out a distance learning pilot with 8th graders in other schools. I need to learn more about the writing process and how to structure this in a distance learning context to help support the pilot.

I'm using this trip to CA to extend into a vacation and will be going to Yosemite this weekend, so I'm excited to think about Yosemite while I work on this.

Journal Response:

What do you treasure?

I treasure "all living things great and small".

I selected this picture because it marries the beauty of thepark,with an amateur adventure (thumb in shot) being able to take advantage of it. It also looks like it might be dusk, which is typically a time parks are closed, but being able to camp at Yosemeite opens up the opportunity to experience nature at different times and see different aspects. From flickr username: snotgoblin

PSA Storyboard

Thesis statement: (Why is this National Park valuable?) Yosemite is valuable because it was one of the earliest National Parks and was formed to protect the cultural evidence of various people that lived in the area as well as the geographic beauty. Preserving this land since 1864 has led to an area that can now give evidence to the power of preserving land as national parks. Since Yosemite was not the first national park, it showcases the value of preserving not just a singular park as an isolated example, but tracts of land in various regions.
Statement of the problem: (What is threatening the sustainability of the National Park’s natural and cultural resources?) Funding is a threat to the sustainability of National Parks. In a time of crisis, varying interest groups are quick to describe funding to competing areas as "non-essential". A park like Yosemite has an annual operating budget of $29 million that needs to be safeguard. It may seem like an easy solution to find and increase profit opportunities in and around to help fund it's budget. however since parks are such unique beautiful regions they often find themselves threatened by increased real estate and commercial interests, which can overwhelm the land and lead to poor air quality.
Argument 1: - supporting facts (location of National Park and its natural and cultural resources that should be sustained)	Argument 2: - supporting facts (Hypothesis consequences to future of the natural and cultural resources if threats continue based on the evidence you researched)	Argument 3: - supporting facts (Present possible solutions that the community or actions that the government could take to sustain the natural and cultural resources of the National Park)
Conclusion and call for action:

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Common Storyboard

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